History stars in must-reads for March

Story highlights

History figures prominently in some outstanding new releases at book stores

Two of the offerings present a classic myth reimagined

Also out this month is a collection of short stories that hopscotches through time

Oscar Wilde once wrote, "Any fool can make history, but it takes a great man to write it" -- or a great woman, he should have added.

Nevertheless, history figures prominently in some outstanding new releases at bookstores, including a classic myth reimagined, a biography for tech lovers and a collection of short stories that hopscotches through time.

So with that extra hour of evening daylight we get after setting the clocks forward this weekend, why not use the time to dive into the pages of these must reads for March:

In her debut novel, "The Song of Achilles," Madeline Miller gives her own fresh take on the Greek age of heroes, specifically the events leading up to and including the Trojan War. But Miller's novel is much more than an homage to "The Iliad."

Madeline Miller's novel revisits Greek mythology.

She goes beyond Homer's epic version of events to focus on the relationship between Achilles, a golden-haired hero and the son of a savage sea goddess, and Patroclus, a young prince in exile, an awkward, ordinary everyman who is out of his depth in very non-ordinary world.

Despite their differences, the boys become best friends and eventually much more. When Helen of Troy is kidnapped, the two are drawn into the bloody battle to reclaim her, where they are both tested by fate and sacrifice.

Miller, who teaches Latin, Greek and Shakespeare in high school, breathes new life into an ancient story.

In "Turing's Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe," renowned historian George Dyson tells the relatively unknown story surrounding the invention of one of the world's first computers. This breakthrough came at the end of World War II, around the same time the hydrogen bomb was developed.

Dyson argues it's no coincidence that the most destructive and the most constructive of human inventions appeared at the same time.

George Dyson explores the invention of one of the first computers.

While most of us know the story behind the "Manhattan Project," Dyson introduces readers to the small group of men and women at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. Think of them as the first computer hackers. The group, led by Alan Turing and John von Neumann, showed how numbers not only meant things, but could do things as well.

Turing's group used just five kilobytes of memory, about the same amount of memory as your computer desktop cursor, to achieve unprecedented success in fields such as weather prediction, nuclear weapons design and the evolution of things from viruses to stars. Dyson not only recounts this fascinating chapter from our history but also has some provocative insight into where the digital universe might be heading.

Los Alamos, New Mexico, scene of the Manhattan Project, also serves as the backdrop for one of the short stories in award-winning author Jim Shepard's "You Think That's Bad." His fourth and latest collection, just released in paperback, demonstrates again that no one writes such wildly diverse historical short fiction with this kind of astonishing originality.

In his pessimistically titled tome, Shepard crisscrosses time and place to find unique and lonely characters who exist on life's bizarre fringes.

Author Jim Shepard's book hopscotches across time.

In Shepard's stories, each of these characters face crises, both personal and professional, sometimes reaching catastrophic proportions, often with devastating results. Among them, a British woman exploring Iran in the 1930s, a 15th-century French serial killer who preys on children, a Japanese special-effects genius responsible for creating Godzilla and a Dutch engineer battling rising sea levels in Rotterdam in 2030.

All of these stories are extremely imaginative, infused with meticulous research. Most of all, they're insightful. While Shepard's writing may be classified as fiction, his stories feel absolutely authentic and true.

Catching up with authors

Author Tim Federle has just wrapped a long day at the Atlanta Junior Theater festival, working with several thousand boys and girls who dream of stardom on the Broadway stage. Count these kids as lucky; they've found the perfect mentor.

In "The Hot Country," U.S. troops invade a foreign country where oil interests are at stake, a rising foreign power is looking to derail U.S. forces using cloak and dagger tactics, and there's a gunfight in the desert against insurgent enemies.

Crime fiction fans know the name Parker, a single-named anti-hero of the 1960s. As a character, he's a career criminal, hired gun and professional thief, a pulp-fiction prince of America's seedy underworld.

Werewolves are usually the stuff of B-movies and bad novels, but last year British author Glen Duncan did the unthinkable in literary circles, crafting a howling good tale out of the weary werewolf myth.

The night before he turned 40, Rich Roll had what he calls a "moment of clarity." Overweight and out of shape, Roll had to stop to catch his breath while walking up the stairs of his Southern California home. Roll, now a father of four, feared he was close to a heart attack.

Craig Johnson looks like he could have stepped out of the pages of one of his own best-selling Western novels. With the late-day sun behind him, he could even pass for his fictional hero, Sheriff Walt Longmire.

Former O.J. Simpson trial prosecturo Marcia Clark became a household name as the lead prosecutor in the O.J. Simpson murder trial. Clark is still mining her past, only now as a successful crime novelist.

We should all be so lucky to have friends like Elvis Cole and Joe Pike. Private detectives in modern-day Los Angeles, they're the stars of best-selling author Robert Crais' award-winning series of crime novels.